How to disable 1 of the 2 sound card within Ubuntu?

[ranjan2001]

I have dual boot XP/Ubuntu
2 soundcards
1 creative cambridge soundworks
asus mobo onboard sound

in XP the onboard sound is not good as creative & I have the creative drivers for XP which makes the sound good.

On Ubunutu the creative does not give 4.1 sound (out of the box installation) so I want on board card to be used by default, when I make it default in linux it keeps loosing its setting & switch back to creative sound card instead.

Do I need to install special creative drivers, will then it give me 4.1 sound?
How can I disable the creative card from linux so its not detected on boot up thus giving sound from on board card?

I cant disable from BIOS as I need both of them in 1 in XP 2 in linux.

aplay -l gives me this info
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 0: AD198x Analog [AD198x Analog]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: Intel [HDA Intel], device 1: AD198x Digital [AD198x Digital]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: U0xe5c0x6441 [USB Device 0xe5c:0x6441], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 2: Live [SBLive! Value [CT4832]], device 0: emu10k1 [ADC Capture/Standard PCM Playback]
Subdevices: 32/32
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
Subdevice #1: subdevice #1
Subdevice #2: subdevice #2
Subdevice #3: subdevice #3
Subdevice #4: subdevice #4
Subdevice #5: subdevice #5
Subdevice #6: subdevice #6
Subdevice #7: subdevice #7
Subdevice #8: subdevice #8
Subdevice #9: subdevice #9
Subdevice #10: subdevice #10
Subdevice #11: subdevice #11
Subdevice #12: subdevice #12
Subdevice #13: subdevice #13
Subdevice #14: subdevice #14
Subdevice #15: subdevice #15
Subdevice #16: subdevice #16
Subdevice #17: subdevice #17
Subdevice #18: subdevice #18
Subdevice #19: subdevice #19
Subdevice #20: subdevice #20
Subdevice #21: subdevice #21
Subdevice #22: subdevice #22
Subdevice #23: subdevice #23
Subdevice #24: subdevice #24
Subdevice #25: subdevice #25
Subdevice #26: subdevice #26
Subdevice #27: subdevice #27
Subdevice #28: subdevice #28
Subdevice #29: subdevice #29
Subdevice #30: subdevice #30
Subdevice #31: subdevice #31
card 2: Live [SBLive! Value [CT4832]], device 2: emu10k1 efx [Multichannel Capture/PT Playback]
Subdevices: 8/8
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
Subdevice #1: subdevice #1
Subdevice #2: subdevice #2
Subdevice #3: subdevice #3
Subdevice #4: subdevice #4
Subdevice #5: subdevice #5
Subdevice #6: subdevice #6
Subdevice #7: subdevice #7
card 2: Live [SBLive! Value [CT4832]], device 3: emu10k1 [Multichannel Playback]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

[infra_red_dude]

This would mostly be in /etc/modules. Post the contents of that file, lets see if the device driver is loaded from here.

[praka123]

blacklist the module of the sound card which you dont want to activate.

[unni]

This is what I do to make my Creative card default:

1. Type 'cat /proc/asound/modules' to determine sound cards name. (In my case, the output will be 'snd_emu10k1' & 'snd_intel8x0'.)
2. Open the file '/etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base'.
3. At the end of this file, add

options snd_emu10k1 index=0
options snd_intel8x0 index=1

Here 'snd_emu10k1' & 'snd_intel8x0' are my 2 cards (Creative and onboard respectively).

After doing this, the card which is given index=0 (snd_emu10k1 in this case) will become the default.

I think this will solve your problem. Even if the Creative card is not giving 4.1 sound, you can still use it instead of the onboard card, in Ubuntu.

[ranjan2001]

Good to know the solution but i now found the way to get 4.1 sound from creative too so as of now part of the problem is solved.

Do I need to install any specific driver for quite old card, default driver though is giving 4.1 sound & I can control all 4 speaker as per my requirement.

[unni]

Good to know the solution but i now found the way to get 4.1 sound from creative too so as of now part of the problem is solved.


How did you enable 4.1 output?

blacklist the module of the sound card which you dont want to activate.
How do I blacklist a module?

[ranjan2001]

Right click volume control in task bar>open volume control>edit>preference
There select surround & wave surround from the list & then adjust the front & rear speakers, this will get you 4.1 sound.

[praka123]

How do I blacklist a module?

In file , /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist - add the module you want to blacklist in below format :-
blacklist modulename

first find the modules which are loaded for the sound card which you DONT want to use by looking into the output of "lsmod" command.

[unni]

Thanks ranjan2001 & praka123 for your replies.

[ranjan2001]

Ur welcome
Just note that the bass/treble/tone all 3 should be checked from preference.
After that go to "switches" tab & check mark "tone" only then bass/treble controls become active, else they are not.
http://img120.imageshack.us/img120/8578/screenshotvolumecontrolvh0.th.png (http://img120.imageshack.us/img120/8578/screenshotvolumecontrolvh0.png)